Monday, August 29, 2016

US Ryder Cup captain Davis Love will rely

more on player stats to finalise 2016 team

FROM GOLF DIGEST.COM

In a dark conference
room at the midtown Manhattan Hilton, U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Davis Love
III admitted he didn’t realise “until this past weekend” that he had
nearly a month longer than Europe to finalise the members of his team.

While European captain Darren Clarke will announce his final picks
tomorrow at 7:30 am EST, Love gets to wait until the Tour Championship
concludes on September 25th to make his last happy phone call.

If this
feels reminiscent of Matt Kuchar’s lack of awareness of the Olympic
format one week before Rio, don’t be fooled. It’s arguable this year’s
American line-up and pairings will be the most deeply premeditated ever.

Specifically,
Love has been consulting with a group of statisticians hired by the PGA
of America. During his last captaincy at the 2012 Ryder Cup, categories
like strokes gained putting and other ShotLink-driven stats were still
rather esoteric.

But they’ve since gained wider understanding and their
keeping more sophisticated, and Love plans to give them increased weight
in his decision-making this time around.

“Patrick
Reed suggested we pay closer attention to strokes gained tee-to-green,”
Love said. In alternate-shot, for example, it could be possible to pair
a player whose proximity to the hole with irons syncs with another’s
putting percentages from those distances, and then overlay that data
across the holes at Hazeltine National.

“Now
instead of saying ‘OK, you two go play together,’ we can give players a
reason they’re paired,” Love said. “We can say, ‘Hey, we ran the
numbers and dissected the course and together you guys are unbeatable.’
Knowing why you’re playing with a guy can do so much to boost
confidence.”

That a major fruit of the Task Force—formed in the wake of
our most recent trouncing—will be a system with which players can grow
familiar and find comfort, was a theme of Love’s presser. “It’s like
Dean Smith, who could say to his freshman, ‘Look, we’ve been running
this same offense for 12 years. Step into it and do your thing and we’ll
win.’”

Of course,
Love, who largely attributes his selection as captain to the fact his
relationships with players are strong and current (the 52-year-old is
only 12 months removed from his most recent US PGA Tour win), isn’t about
to let big data totally override which personalities mesh best.

“I’ve
told the eight guys [who qualified based on points] this is their
team,” Love said. “If there’s a guy they all want to make the squad,
he’s on.

“I’ve got a
jillion people coming to me telling me what to do. It’s my job and the
job of the assistant captains to overthink this. We’ve got to take all
this data and decide what’s important and what isn’t. We’re only going
to tell the player what he needs to know, so that way it’s easier for
him to go out and play.”

In case this newfangled number-crunching sounds like a leg up, it’s
really just a equaliser. The Europeans have been employing the
consulting services of 15th Hole, self-described as a “passionate team
of golf professionals, data experts and software engineers” for at least
the last two Cups.